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been slept in when I got here that Monday morning,

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but whether he slept here one night or two, I just can’t

say.”

“But you’re positive you didn’t see him again after

you left at noon on Saturday?”

“No sir, I didn’t.”

“What about children? The Harrises have any?”

“Just one girl. Susan. She was grown and gone before

I started working here, but she’s been here with them for

Christmas a time or two. You could tell that she was his

eyeballs, he was that foolish about her, but she was break-

ing his heart. Her husband was killed in Nine-Eleven and

it changed her. Mrs. Harris says she used to love pretty

dresses and parties and flying off to Europe. First time

I saw her, though, she was skinny as a broomstick and

she was wearing stuff that looked like it came from the

Goodwill. Turned her away from God. She sat right here

at this table and told them both that if God made the

world, he wasn’t taking very good care of it and it was up

to people like them—people who had money—to do the

work God should’ve been doing. I believe she still lives in

New York. No children though. I think he used to take

off and go see her two or three times a year.”

“And you didn’t see the need to notify her or Mrs.

Harris that he was missing?”

“I didn’t know that he was. He could have been at

his place in the mountains or he might’ve been working

over in the New Bern office. Like I say, he never lets me

know where he was going or when he was coming back.

He’d take a notion and he’d be gone and the only way

I’d know was if I happened to be out there in the hall

when he was leaving. ‘Back in a few days.’ That’s all he

ever told me. But you can ask Sid—Mr. Lomax.”

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MARGARET MARON

She passed the plate of cinnamon rolls down the

table and Jamison took another. Dwight and Richards

passed.

“Do you know Ms. Smith?” Dwight asked. “Flame

Smith?”

Mrs. Samuelson was too disciplined to sniff, but the

expression that crossed her face was one that reminded

him of Bessie Stewart, his mother’s housekeeper who

had helped raise him. He would not have been surprised

to hear a muttered, “Common as dirt.”

“I’ve met her,” she admitted.

“And?”

“And nothing. If she was here in the mornings, I

fixed her some breakfast, too. Wasn’t any of my busi-

ness what went on upstairs, although I have to say that

she was always polite to me. Not like some of them he

brought home.”

Dwight paused at that. “He had other women?”

“He used to. When he and Mrs. Harris were still liv-

ing together. This last year though, it’s only been her.

That Smith woman.”

“Do you know their names?”

Mrs. Samuelson cupped her mug in her workworn

hands as if to hold in the warmth and her brown eyes

met Dwight’s in a steady look. “If you don’t mind, sir,

I’d just as soon not say.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but if Mr. Harris has been mur-

dered, we need to know who might have hated him

enough to do it.”

The housekeeper nodded to the two detectives. “They

say those hands and legs y’all’ve been finding might be

him?”

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“I’m afraid so.”

She shook her graying head. “I don’t see how any

woman could do that. That takes a hateful and hating

man.”

“Like a husband who finds out his wife’s been cheat-

ing on him?”

She thought about it, then nodded slowly. “Only one

of them was married, but yes, her husband might could

do it. A gal from El Salvador. Said her name was Strella.

I think her husband’s name is Ramon. Mr. Lomax can

tell you. They live in the migrant camp on the other side

of the field. She was here twice last summer. First time

was to help me turn all the mattresses and he came in

and saw her. Second time, I guess she was stretched out

on one of the mattresses.”

“Who else, Mrs. Samuelson?”

Reluctantly, she gave up two more names. “Both

of ’em white, but I haven’t seen either of them in this

house in over a year. Mrs. Smith pretty much had a lock

on him.”

They all looked up as Denning came to the kitchen

door. There was a smudge of fingerprint powder on his

chin, more on his fingers. He crossed to the sink to

wash his hands and Mrs. Samuelson immediately rose

and tore off some paper towels.

“Thanks,” he said, drying his hands.

“Any luck?” Dwight asked.

“It’s a match. No question about it. The state lab can

take a look if you want, Major, but it’s Harris.”

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MARGARET MARON

While Mrs. Samuelson showed Richards and Denning

over the house and the nearer outbuildings, Dwight

called Reid Stephenson as he had promised and asked

him to notify the Harris daughter before it hit the news

media. “And you might as well tell Pete Taylor so he

can pass the word on to Mrs. Harris.”

Then he and Jamison drove along a lane that was a

shortcut over to the farm manager’s home. Trim and

tidy, the white clapboard house appeared to date from

the late thirties and sat in a grove of pecan trees whose

buds were beginning to swell in the mild spring air.

No one appeared when Dwight tapped the horn, but

through the open window of the truck, they could hear

the sound of tractors in the distance and they followed

another lane past a line of scrubby trees and out into a

forty- or fifty-acre field. Two tractors were preparing

the ground for planting. A third tractor seemed to be

in trouble. It was surrounded by a mechanic’s truck,

two pickups with a Harris Farms logo on the doors, and

several Latino and Anglo men.

As the two deputies drew near, a tall Anglo detached

himself from the group.

“Mr. Lomax?” Dwight asked. “Sid Lomax?”

The man nodded in wary acknowledgment. He wore

a billed cap that did not hide the flecks of gray at his

temples and his face was weathered like the leather of a

baseball glove, but if the muscles of his body had begun

to soften, it was not evident in the way he moved with

such easy grace.

“Lomax,” Dwight said again. “Didn’t you use to play

shortstop for Fuquay High School?”

Lomax looked at Dwight more carefully and a rueful

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grin spread across his face. “I oughta bust you one in

the jaw, bo. You played third for West Colleton, didn’t

you? Can’t call your name right now, but damned if you

weren’t the one got an unassisted triple play off my line

drive in the semifinals with the bases loaded, right?”

“Dwight Bryant,” Dwight said, putting out his hand.

“Colleton County Sheriff ’s Department.”

“Yeah?” Lomax took his hand in a strong clasp.

“Reckon I’d better not punch you out then.”

“Might make it a little hard for my deputy here,”

Dwight agreed as Jamison smiled.

“Man, we were supposed to go all the way that year,”

he said, shaking his head. “Oh well. What can I do for

you?”

“You’ve heard about the body parts been scattered

along this road?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m afraid it’s your boss.”

“The hell you say!” His surprise seemed genuine.

“Buck Harris? You sure?”

“We’ve just compared the fingerprints with those in

Harris’s study here. They match.”

“Well, damn!”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

Lomax pulled out a Palm Pilot and consulted his cal-

endar. “Sunday the nineteenth at the Cracker Barrel out

on the Interstate. I was having dinner with my son and

his wife after church and he stopped by our table on

his way out. I walked out to the car with him because

he wanted to firm it up about moving most of the crew

on this place to one of our camps down east. We’ve

had tomatoes here the last two years, so this year we’re

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MARGARET MARON

planting these fields in soybeans. Beans don’t take a lot

of labor.”

“So did you move them yet?” Dwight asked.

“All but these guys you see here. Why?”

“Any women or children left in the camp?”

“A couple to cook for the men. Three or four kids

and they all go to school. We encourage that. We don’t

let ’em quit or work during the school year. Mrs. Harris

is pretty strict about that.”

“Not Mr. Harris?”

“Well, you know Buck.” He paused and looked at

them dubiously. “Or do you?”

“Never met him that I know of,” said Dwight.

“Me neither,” said Jamison.

“Buck didn’t mind cutting corners if it would save a

few dollars.”

“In what way?”

Lomax shrugged. “Hard to think of any one thing.

He’s one of those up-by-his-bootstraps guys. Always

saying he started with nothing and built it into some-

thing. Wasn’t completely nothing though, was it? He

had what was left of his granddaddy’s farm. Gave him a

place to stand while he leveraged the rest. Not the most

patient man you’d ever want to meet. Couldn’t bear to

see any workers standing around idle if the clock was

running. Thought they ought to keep picking tomatoes

or cutting okra even if it was pouring down rain because

that’s what he did when he first started. Always pushing

the limits.”

“You got along with him though?”

“Enough that I never quit him. Came close a couple

of times. But he paid good wages for hard work and

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he knew he didn’t have to be breathing down my neck

every minute to make sure I was keeping to the sched-

ule. And most of the time he could laugh about things.

He liked to keep tabs on whatever was going on. He’d

come out here in the fields and get his hands dirty once

in awhile or plow for a few hours. That man did love to

sit a tractor.”

“Yet you weren’t surprised when he didn’t show up

for two weeks?”

Again the shrug. “I knew he and Mrs. Harris were

fighting it out in court. I figured that’s where he was.”

“You have a couple here named Ramon and Strella?”

“Ramon? Sure. Only they’re not on the place now.”

Once more he consulted his Palm Pilot. “They moved

over to Harris Farm Three back around Thanksgiving.

That’s down near New Bern.”

“Any objection if we question the people still here?”

Dwight asked.

“No problem. Either of you speak Spanish?”

As both deputies shook their heads, Lomax unclipped

the walkie-talkie on his belt. “Let me get Juan for you.

He’s pretty fluent in English.” When the walkie-talkie

crackled, the farm manager said, “Hey, Juan? Come on

in, bo.”

Immediately, one of the tractors broke off and headed

in their direction.

Before it reached them, though, Dwight’s own phone

buzzed again.

“Hey, Major?” Denning said. “You might want to get

back over here. We’ve found Harris’s car. I think we’ve

also found the slaughterhouse.”

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C H A P T E R

18

A good barn is essential, and no farmer can afford to be

without one, which should be of sufficient size for all the

purposes to which it is to be appropriated.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Dwight Bryant

Monday Afternoon, March 6

% Sid Lomax followed Dwight and Jack Jamison

back to a cluster of outbuildings, which were

screened from sight of the farmhouse and garage by a

thick row of tall evergreen trees and bushes. In addition

to the usual shelters, several of the sheds held special-

ized equipment for the different crops. The two trucks

pulled up in front of a shed where Richards was already

cordoning the place off with a roll of Denning’s yellow

crime scene tape. This shed was built for utility, not

beauty: a concrete slab flush with the ground, steel

studs, steel framing, a tinned roof that sloped from front

to back, no windows. One of the tall double doors stood

open and gave enough light to see that a silver BMW

was parked inside.

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HARD ROW

“What’s this shed used for?” Dwight asked Lomax as

they walked closer.

“It’s where we store the tomato sprayers, but we sent

them on to the other farms before Christmas because

we’re going to grow beans here this year. It’s supposed

to be empty right now.”

“Watch where you put your feet and don’t touch any-

thing,” Richards cautioned him as he started to follow

them inside.

Not that there was that much to touch. The car was

the only object of any size in a space designed to hold at

least two large pieces of machinery.

As they entered, Dwight paused and examined the

door fastenings. The hasp was a hinged steel strap that

slotted over a sturdy steel staple meant to hold a pad-

lock and secure the strap. A wooden peg hung from a

string but there was no padlock in sight and no sign that

the doors had been forced.

Lomax followed his eyes. “We keep the sheds locked

if there’s something worth stealing in them,” he said,

“but we don’t bother when they’re empty, just peg the

doors shut. I doubt I’ve stuck my head in here since

Christmas.”

Carefully, Denning used a screwdriver to pull a chain

that released the catch for the other door and let it

swing wide, then used equal care to switch on a couple

of bare lightbulbs overhead that immediately lit up the

gory scene at the rear of the shed.

Blood, lots of blood, had pooled at a slight low spot

and blow flies and maggots were busily churning it on

this mild spring day. Small dried chunks were scattered

around.

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MARGARET MARON

“Bone,” Denning said succinctly.

The bloody axe had been flung to one side but there

were deep gouges in the concrete floor where the blade

had come down heavily.

But that wasn’t the worst.

The real horror was a length of bloody rusty iron

chain that lay in heavy loops, the links caked in blood

and gore, the two ends secured with a lock.

“Dear God,” Lomax murmured. “He was alive and

conscious when the hacking started?”

Denning nodded grimly. “Looks like it.”

“And after it was finished,” said Dwight, “the killer

didn’t need to open the lock. He just pulled away the

pieces.”

Lomax turned away and bolted for the door. They

heard him retching, but there were no grins from any of

them for a civilian’s involuntary reaction.

Except for Denning, all of them had grown up on

working farms where food animals had been routinely

slaughtered to fill the family freezer for the winter, but

that sort of killing was done cleanly and as humanely as

possible.

This though—!

I’m getting too hardened, Richards thought sadly.

What would Mike think of me that I’m not out there

throwing up, too?

“Looks like his clothes over here,” said Denning.

Jockey shorts lay tangled with a jacket, shirt, and pair

of pants. Shoes and socks had been tossed into a corner.

“No blood,” said Richards. “So he was stripped naked

before the chain went on.”

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HARD ROW

Jamison was appalled by the level of cruelty.

“Somebody really hated his guts, didn’t they?”

“But where the hell’s the head and penis?” asked

Dwight. “Either of y’all check the car?”

“Not there,” Richards said. “The keys are in the igni-

tion though.”

Dwight peered through the windshield. The steering

wheel sported a black lambswool cover, so no chance of

fingerprints from it.

“Y’all open the trunk?”

“Not yet,” Richards admitted.

They waited for Percy Denning to dust the door han-

dle. “Too smeared,” he reported.

After gingerly extracting the key from the ignition, he

fitted one of them into the trunk lock.

Richards held her breath as the lid lifted and immedi-

ately realized she was not the only one when the others

collectively exhaled.

The trunk was upholstered in dark gray and, except

for the spare tire, appeared at first to be empty. And

then they took a second look.

“Shit!” said Denning. He got his camera and took

pictures of the stains on the floor and lid of the trunk

and of the once-white undershirt with which the killer

had probably wiped the worst of the blood from his

hands. “This was the delivery truck.”

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C H A P T E R

19

With a zest, seasoned and heightened by congenial compan-

ionship, let him have at times . . . such festivities as sweep

from the brain the cobwebs of care.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Deborah Knott

Monday Afternoon, March 6

% After lunch, I finished up the first appearances.

Normally, unless an address is familiar for other

reasons, I don’t pay much attention to the ones given

by the miscreants who come before me, but so soon

after talking with Dwight and with the Harris divorce

on my mind, I looked closer at the Latino who had been

picked up Saturday night and was charged with posses-

sion of two rocks of cocaine.

“Ward Dairy Road?” I asked through the interpreter.

“Harris Farms?”

“Sí,” he said and followed that with a burst of Spanish.

The only word I caught was Harris and the interpreter,

a young woman going for an associate degree in edu-

cation out at Colleton Community, confirmed that he

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lived in the Harris Farms migrant camp out there on the

old Buckley place.

I appointed him an attorney, set his bond at five thou-

sand, and before remanding him to the custody of the

jailer, asked if he knew Mr. Harris.

“¿Conoce el Señor Harris? ”

From the negative gestures and the tone of his reply,

I was not surprised to hear that this guest worker knew

the “big boss” by sight but had never had direct deal-

ings with him.

The rest of his reply was almost lost to me as a dis-

traught white woman burst through the doors at the

rear of the courtroom with a wailing infant. There was

a huge red abrasion on the side of her face and blood

dripped from her cut lip onto the dirty pink blanket

wrapped around the baby.

A uniformed policewoman hurried in after her, call-

ing, “Ma’am? Ma’am?”

“Please!” she cried as the bailiff moved out to inter-

cept her. “He’s going to kill me and the baby, too! You

got to stop him! You got to! Please?”

Between us, we got her calmed down enough to

speak coherently and give me the details I needed to

issue an immediate domestic violence protection order.

Someone from the local safe house was in the court-

room next door and she volunteered to take the woman

and her baby to the shelter.

As things returned to normal, I finished the last of

the first appearances and sent them snuffling back to jail

to await trial or try to make bail. While the ADA got

ready to pull the first shuck on today’s criminal trials,

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MARGARET MARON

I asked my clerk to check on when I’d signed the sum-

mary judgment for the Harris divorce.

At the break, I phoned Dwight, who was out at the

old Buckley place by then and gave him the date—

Monday, February 20. “Four full days before those legs

were found,” I said.

“So if he died before then, maybe the wife decided

she’d rather inherit everything instead of having to di-

vide it with his heirs?”

“Only if she withdraws her request for the ED,” I

reminded him.

“Who are they, by the way?”

“I haven’t a clue,” I said, resisting the urge to go into

all the possible legalities that could complicate his sim-

plistic summation. “Reid might know. Am I still going

to see you in a couple of hours?”

“I’ll be there,” he promised.

I adjourned at 5:30, then got held up to sign some

orders, so that I went downstairs prepared to apologize

for being a little late. I needn’t have worried.

Melanie Ashworth, the department’s recently hired

spokesperson, was holding forth about something to

reporters in the main lobby, so I crossed out of camera

range and asked the dispatcher on duty what was up.

“They just identified all those body parts,” he whis-

pered. “It’s Buck Harris.”

I walked on down the hall. Dwight was in Bo’s office

with a couple of deputies, and they seemed to be dis-

cussing something serious. He held up a with-you-in-a-

minute finger and I signaled that I’d wait for him in his

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office. It did not look good for the home team. Even

though Cal and I both needed for me to follow through

on this, I should have known better than to try to set up

an evening with Dwight when he was in the middle of a

sensational murder investigation.

Fortunately, I had brought along some reading mate-

rial, although it didn’t make me happy to read that a col-

league had been reversed on an earlier ruling. She had

ordered the divorced father of minor children to turn

in all his guns until the children were grown. This was

after he himself testified that yes, he did keep a loaded

handgun on the dash of his truck and loaded long guns

in the house and no, he didn’t plan to lock them up in

a gun cabinet or have them fitted with trigger locks be-

cause his kids knew better than to mess with them.

The father had appealed and the higher court had

sided with the dad. I just hoped my friend would never

have to send those judges the obituary of one of those

kids with an “I told you so” scribbled across it.

I had rendered a similar judgment almost a month

ago, but so far that father hadn’t appealed. With a little

luck, he might never hear that there were higher courts

that would let him put his preschoolers in harm’s way. I

certainly wasn’t going to tell him.

Dwight was still tied up when I finished reading the

official stuff, so I pulled out Blood Done Sign My Name,

my book club’s selection for March.

I know, I know. My club is always behind the curve,

but hey, sometimes it’s helpful to let the first waves of

enthusiasm wash out what’s trendy and leave what’s

solid. We’ve spared ourselves a lot of best sellers that

weren’t worth the trees it took to print them. With this

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MARGARET MARON

book, the first sentence grabbed me by the throat and

was so compelling that I was deep into it by the time

Dwight finally got free

“Sorry about supper, shug,” he said when he joined

me. To my surprise, it was five past seven. “I guess we’ll

have to get something at the game.”

I slid my book into the tote bag that held my purse

and papers. “You’re not going to blow me off ?”

“Nope. You’re right. We’ve got good people. Let ’em

run with the ball.”

He picked up his jacket, held my coat for me, and

switched off the light behind us.

“Enjoy the game,” Bo called as we passed his office.

Happily, the lobby was now bare of reporters.

“They were all over the Harris story when I got here.

Y’all hired Melanie Ashworth just in time, didn’t you?”

I said, holding out my hand for his keys. Late as it was,

we didn’t have time to meander in to Raleigh with him

behind the wheel.

He handed them over without dissenting argument

and said tiredly, “You don’t know the half of it. It’s

been one hellacious day. Remember that second right

hand we found?”

“The Alzheimer’s patient who drowned in Apple

Creek?”

Dwight nodded. “The autopsy report just came in.

The body’s definitely Fred Mitchiner, but it turns out

that an animal didn’t just pull the hand loose. Somebody

cut it off.”

“What?”

“Yeah. That hand had been in the water so long that

the connective tissues were pretty much gone, but there

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was a ligament that must have still been intact because it

was only recently cut off. Not when he first died.”

“Someone killed him?”

“Hard to say. The ME doesn’t think so. There’s no

evidence of trauma to the body, but he’d been in the

water so long that there’s no way to know if he drowned

by accident or if someone held him under.”

I gave Dwight my tote bag to stash behind the seat

and unlocked the truck. Although we were in danger

of missing the opening face-off, we would also miss the

rush hour traffic.

“Another cute thing,” Dwight said as we pulled out

of the parking lot behind the courthouse. “A lot of

Alzheimer’s patients will try to get away, but the nurs-

ing home has said all along that Mitchiner wasn’t one to

wander off. For some reason the place reminded him of

spending the summers at his grandparents’ house with a

bunch of cousins, so he was pretty content there.”

“So content that they didn’t put an electronic brace-

let on him?”

“Exactly. Another reason that the family’s claiming

negligence. You do know that the town’s speed limit is

thirty-five, don’t you?”

I braked for a red light and adjusted his mirrors while

I waited for the green. “When’s the last time a Dobbs

police officer stopped a sheriff ’s deputy for speeding?”

“That’s because we don’t speed unless we’ve got a

blue light flashing.”

“Hmmm,” I said, and reached as if to turn his on.

He snorted and batted my hand away. “You try that

and I’ll write you up myself.”

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MARGARET MARON

“Any theories as to how and why he wound up in the

creek? Who profits?”

“Nobody. That’s the hell of it. He was there on

Medicaid. No property. No bank account. His nearest

relatives are the daughter who’s suing and a sixteen-

year-old grandson and everybody says they were both

devoted to the old man. One or the other was there

almost every day for the last two years, ever since she

had to put him there because they couldn’t handle him

at home anymore what with her working and the kid in

school. Wasn’t like the Parsons woman.”

“That the one down in Makely?”

“Yeah. She had children and grandchildren, too, but

when she went missing, none of them noticed till the

nursing home told them. They say nobody from the

family had come to visit her in nearly a year.”

“Didn’t stop them from trying to get damages for

mental anguish, though, did it?” I said, recalling some

of the details.

He laughed and relaxed a little as I merged onto the

interstate where it’s legal to go seventy and troopers

usually turn a blind eye to seventy-five.

“What about Buck Harris’s place?” I asked. “Anything

turn up there?”

“Oh yes,” he said, his jaw tightening. “He was butch-

ered in one of the sheds back of the house.”

Without going into too many of the grisly details, he

hit the high spots of what they had found—a locked

chain, the fact that Harris had been naked and probably

conscious when the first axe blow fell, how the killer

must have used the trunk of Harris’s car to strew the

body parts along Ward Dairy Road.

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HARD ROW

I mulled over the chronology and tried not to visu-

alize what he had described. “Nobody saw him after

that Sunday, the divorce was final on Monday, his legs

weren’t found till Friday and the ME’s setting the time

of death as when?”

“Originally between Saturday and Thursday, but

that’s been narrowed down to Sunday as the earliest

possible day.”

“Because Flame talked to him then?”

“And because his farm manager saw him on Sunday

around noon. If the body was in that unheated shed

from the time of death till the night they were found,

then Sunday’s more likely. If somebody held him pris-

oner for a few days first though, it could be as late as

Thursday. Denning’s taking extra pains with the insect

evidence in the blood.”

Insect evidence?

Read maggots.

“Is that going to be much use? Cold as it was all that

week, would there have been blowflies?”

“Remember the foxes?”

I smiled and lifted his hand to my lips. Of course I

remembered.

It had been a chilly Sunday morning back in early

January. The temperature could not have been much

over freezing, but the sun was shining and when he asked

if I’d like to take a walk, I had immediately reached for

a scarf and jacket. Hand in hand, we had rambled down

along the far side of the pond, going nowhere and in no

hurry to get there, enjoying the morning and sharing a

contentment that had needed few words. On the right

side of the rutted lane lay the lake-size expanse of dark

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MARGARET MARON

water; on the left, a tangle of bushes, trash trees, and

vines edged a field that had lain fallow since early sum-

mer. Some farmers hate to see messy underbrush and

are out with weed killers at the first hint of unwanted

woody plants, but we’ve always left wide swaths for the

birds and small mammals that share the farm with us.

That morning, sparrows and thrashers fluttered in

and out of the hedgerow ahead of us as we approached

and our footsteps flushed huge grasshoppers that had

emerged from their winter hiding to bask in the warm

sun. At a break in the bushes, we paused to look out

over the field and saw movement in the dried weeds

less than fifty feet away. A warning squeeze of his hand

made me keep still. At first I couldn’t make out if they

were dogs or rabbits or—

“Foxes!” Dwight said in a half-whisper.

A pair of little gray foxes were jumping and pounc-

ing. With the wind blowing in our direction, they had

not caught our scent and seemed not to have heard our

low voices.

“What are they after?” I asked, standing on tiptoes to

see. “Field mice?”

At that instant, a big grasshopper flew off from a tuft

of broomstraw and one of the foxes leaped to catch it

in mid-flight.

Entranced, we stood motionless and watched them

hunt and catch more of the hapless insects until they

spooked a cottontail that sprang straight up in the air and

lit off toward the woods with both foxes close behind.

So no, not all insects died in winter.

“There are always blowflies in barns and sheds,”

Dwight reminded me. “They may hunker down when

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HARD ROW

the mercury drops, but anything above thirty-five

and they’re right back out, especially if there’s blood

around.”

We rode in silence for a few minutes. I was carefully

keeping under the speed limit. With all he’d had to cope

with today, I didn’t need to add any more stress. So

what if we missed the opening face-off?

“If it turns out Harris died on Sunday, what’s this

going to do to your ED case?” he asked.

“Not my problem. If it can be proved that he died

before I signed the divorce judgment, then that judg-

ment’s vacated. If he died afterwards, then it proceeds

unless Mrs. Harris dismisses her claim.”

“And if nobody can agree on a time of death?”

“Then Reid and Pete get to argue it out. They or the

beneficiaries under Harris’s will. With a little bit of luck,

some other judge will get to decide on time of death.” I

thought about Flame Smith, who had clearly planned on

becoming the second Mrs. Harris. “I wonder if he made

a will after the separation? Want me to ask Reid?”

“Better let me,” Dwight said. “Could be the motive

for his death.”

“I rather doubt if Flame Smith swung that axe,” I

said.

“You think? I long ago quit saying what a woman will

or won’t do.”

After such a harrowing day, I was glad to see Dwight

get caught up in the hockey game. We ordered ham-

burgers and beers that were delivered to our seats and

found we had only missed the first few scoreless min-

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MARGARET MARON

utes. Soon we were roaring and shouting with the rest

of the fans as the lead seesawed back and forth. Each

time one of our players was sent to the penalty box, the

clock ticked off the seconds with a maddening slowness

that was just the opposite of the way time whizzed by

if it was our chance for a power play. Near the end, the

Canes pulled ahead 3 to 2 and when Brind’Amour iced

the cake with a slap shot that zoomed past their goalie,

Dwight swept me up and spun me around in an exuber-

ant bear hug.

Canes 4 to 2.

Yes!

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C H A P T E R

20

Those farmers who are generally dissatisfied with their con-

dition and imagine that they may be greatly benefitted by a

change of place, will find, in the majority of cases, that the

fault is more in themselves than in their surroundings.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Dwight Bryant

Tuesday Morning, March 7

% The clouds that had intermittently obscured the

moon on the drive home last night had thickened

in the early morning hours and now a heavy rain beat

against the cab of the truck as Dwight and Deborah

waited with Cal at the end of their long driveway for his

schoolbus to arrive.

Normally, thought Dwight, the three of them would

be laughing and chattering about last night’s game, but

his attempt to get Cal to speak of it earlier went no-

where. “The Canes won, you know.”

“I didn’t watch it,” Cal had said, concentrating on

his cereal.

Yes, they had watched the beginning of the game, he

said, but then it was his bedtime. Yes, it was good the

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MARGARET MARON

Canes had won. Yes, he’d had a good time with Jessie

and Emma. When pushed for details, he allowed as how

they had taken him over to Jessie’s house for a couple

of hours to ride horses across the farm. These boots

that he was wearing today? “Jess said I could have them

since they don’t fit anybody else right now.”

“That was nice of her,” Dwight said heartily.

Cal shrugged. “I have to give them back when they

get too tight, so that maybe Bert can wear them.”

He wasn’t openly sulking, and he wasn’t rude. He did

and said nothing that Dwight could use as a launching

pad for a lecture on attitude.

Sitting between them while the rain streamed down

and fogged the truck windows, Deborah was pleasant

and matter-of-fact. Had he not known her so intimately,

he could almost swear that it was a perfectly ordinary

morning. He did know her though, and he sensed her

conscious determination to keep the situation from be-

coming confrontational.

He also sensed the relief that radiated from both of

his passengers when they spotted the big yellow bus

lumbering down the road. Cal immediately pulled on

the door handle.

Although his hooded jacket was water-repellent,

Dwight said, “Wait till she stops or you’ll get soaked,”

but his son was out the truck so quickly that he had to

wait in the downpour for a moment before the driver

could get the door open.

Dwight sighed as the bus pulled off and he gave a

rueful smile to Deborah, who had not moved away even

though the other third of the truck’s bench seat was

now empty. “Sorry about that.”

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HARD ROW

She laid a hand on his thigh and smiled back. A genu-

ine smile this time. “Don’t be. If he wasn’t mad because

I made him miss the game, I’d be worried. I like it that

he’s feeling secure enough to show a little temper.”

“You’re still not going to tell me what it was all

about?”

“One of these years, maybe. Not now though.”

“All the same,” he said as he pulled onto the road and

headed the truck toward Dobbs, “I think he and I are

due to have a little talk this afternoon.”

She considered the ramifications for a moment, then

said, “That might not be a bad idea. It won’t hurt for

him to hear again from you that he’s supposed to listen

to me when you’re not around so that he’ll know we’re

both on the same page, but please make it clear that you

don’t know any details and that you’re not asking for any,

okay?”

“Gotcha.”

She sighed and leaned her head against his shoul-

der. “Poor kid. I think it’s really starting to sink in that

Jonna’s gone forever and he’s stuck here with us.”

“That still doesn’t mean—”

“No,” she agreed before he could finish the thought.

“But it does mean I’m not going to take it too person-

ally and you shouldn’t either. Mother used to tease me

about the time I stomped my foot and yelled that I was

purply mad with her.”

“Purply mad?”

“I knew purple, I didn’t know perfect. The point is, she

was my mother. Not my stepmother, yet I absolutely hated

her at that moment. Nothing we can say or do changes the

fact that Jonna’s dead. That’s the cold hard reality Cal has

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MARGARET MARON

to deal with, but it’s something he’s going to have to work

through on his own. All we can do is give him love and

security and let him know what the rules are.”

Her face was turned up to his and he bent his head to

kiss her. “Anybody ever tell you you ought to run for

judge?”

When they got to the courthouse, it was still pour-

ing, so he dropped her at the covered doorway to the

Sheriff ’s Department and she waited while he parked

and made his way back with a large umbrella. Despite

the rawness of the day, this felt to him like a spring rain,

not a winter one.

“I know Cletus and Mr. Kezzie have a garden big

enough to feed everybody,” he said happily, “but don’t

we want a few tomato plants of our own? And maybe

some peppers? Oh, and three or four hills of okra,

too?”

She shook her head in mock dismay. “Are tomatoes

the camel’s nose under the tent? Am I going to come

home and find the south forty planted in kitchen veg-

etables? I’m warning you right now, Major Bryant. You

can plant anything you want, but I don’t freeze and I

certainly don’t can.”

Because it was early for her, they walked down to the

break room and as they emerged with paper cups of

steaming coffee, they met a damp Reid Stephenson.

“Got an extra one of those?” he asked.

“You’re out early,” Deborah said.

“I’ve had Flame Smith on my tail since last night.

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HARD ROW

What about it, Dwight? When did he die? Before the

divorce or after?”

“Now that I can’t tell you for sure. We may not ever

know.”

“Guess I’d better go talk to Pete Taylor,” he said.

“Was there a will?” Deborah asked.

Dwight frowned at her and she grinned unrepen-

tantly. “It’s going to be a matter of public record sooner

or later. So cui bono, Reid? Or weren’t you the one who

drew it up?”

“Oh, I did one. It was about a week after he initi-

ated divorce proceedings over here. Both the Harrises

decided to hire personal attorneys instead of using the

New Bern firm that handles their combined business

interests.”

“Does Flame inherit anything?”

“Goodbye, Deborah,” Dwight said, sounding out

every syllable of her name.

She laughed and turned to go. “See you for lunch?”

“Probably not.” He motioned for Reid to follow him

into his office.

“I really ought not to tell you anything till I put the

will in for probate,” the younger man said.

Dwight took his seat behind the desk and asked,

“Who’s his executor?”

“His daughter up in New York.” Reid pulled up a

chair and set his coffee on the edge of the desk. “She

was pretty upset when I called her yesterday, but she

called back this morning and she’s flying in this after-

noon.”

“Whether or not the divorce was final won’t affect

the terms of the will, will it?”

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MARGARET MARON

“Actually, it probably will. From the documents he

gave me—and you might want to check with their com-

pany attorneys—their LLC was set for shared ownership

with rights of survival.”

“If one of them dies, the other gets full ownership?”

“That’s my understanding. I’m sure Mrs. Harris’s at-

torney will argue that the divorce doesn’t really matter

because there had been no formal division of property

yet so the terms of the LLC will still be in effect. On the

other hand, if the divorce was finalized before he died,

then the ED could go forward, with his estate taking

whatever he was awarded. It could be a pretty little legal

problem. Of course, he did own property and money in

his own name and his will should stand as to the dispo-

sition of that part of his estate.”

“How much are we talking?”

“His personal estate? Maybe three million, give or

take a few thousand.”

“So answer me Deb’rah’s question. Who inherits?”

“I can’t tell you that, Dwight.”

“Sure you can. Like she said, it’s all going to be pub-

lic record soon enough. Is Flame Smith in the will?”

Reid thought about it a minute, then threw up his

hands in surrender. “Oh yes. To the tune of half a mil-

lion. Except for a few small bequests, the daughter gets

everything else, which he thought was going to be half

of Harris Farms.”

Dwight leaned back in his chair. “What was Buck Harris

really like, Reid?”

“He was okay. Blunt. To the point. Knew what he

wanted and was willing to pay for it. Expected full value

for his money though.”

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HARD ROW

“So why would someone take an axe to him like that?”

“Damned if I know.” Reid took a first swallow of

his coffee and grimaced. “Y’all need to let Julia Lee

start buying your coffee beans. This stuff ’s like battery

acid.”

“I doubt if Bo’s budget runs to a coffee grinder and

gourmet beans,” he said, remembering how he used to

look for excuses to drop by the firm of Lee, Stephenson

and Knott, before Deborah ran for the bench. Coffee

was always good for one visit a week and they did have

the best coffee of any office in town.

Not that he was ever there for the coffee.

After Reid left, Dwight phoned Pete Taylor. “I’d ap-

preciate it if you could get Mrs. Harris to come in and

see me this afternoon?”

Taylor promised that he would try.

Down in the detectives’ squad room, he gave out the

day’s assignments as to the lines he wanted pursued and

the people they should interview.

“One thing, boss,” said Denning. “I found a hammer

at the back of the shed. There was blood on the peen

and one strand of hair that I compared with hairs from

the comb in Harris’s bathroom. I’ve sent them both to

the state lab, but the hairs look like a match to me.”

“Which means?”

“He was probably coldcocked over the head with the

hammer first. We’ll have to wait till we find the head to

know for sure.”

As Dwight returned to his office and the rat’s nest of

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MARGARET MARON

paperwork awaiting his attention, he heard Jamison say,

“Talk to you a minute, Major?”

“Sure. Come on in.”

The deputy followed and closed the door. There was

a troubled look on his round face.

“What’s up?” Dwight asked. He gestured to the chair

Reid Stephenson had vacated, but Jamison continued

to stand.

“I need to tell you that I’m resigning, sir.”

“What? ”

“Yes, sir. Effective the end of next week, if that’s okay

with you.”

“What the hell’s this about? And for God’s sake, sit

down.”

The detective sat, but he looked even more uncom-

fortable and was having trouble meeting Dwight’s

eyes.

Dwight studied him a long moment. “What’s going

on, Jack? If it’s a better offer from another department,

you’re about due a raise. I don’t know that we can

match Raleigh, but—”

“It’s not Raleigh, Major. It’s Iraq.”

Dwight frowned. “I didn’t realize you’re in the

Guard.”

“I’m not. It’s DynCorp. They’re a private security

company that—”

“I know what DynCorp is.” He realized that he should

have seen this coming. Police departments all over the area

had lost good men to private security companies. First war

America’s ever had to contract out, he thought sourly.

“They’ve accepted me into their training program. If

I qualify, I’ll be helping to train Iraqi police officers.”

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HARD ROW

“And that’s what you want to do?”

“Not really but the pay’s too good to pass up, Major.

We’re just not making it on thirty-seven thousand a year.

Cindy wants things for our son and I want them, too.

Over there, I can start at around a hundred-thirty.”

Dwight leaned back in his chair, feeling older and

more tired than he had in a long time. “No, we cer-

tainly can’t match that. But you say you want things for

your son. What about a father? Civilian personnel are

getting killed over there.”

Jamison nodded. “I know. But like Cindy says, police

officers are getting shot at over here, too.”

“You ever been shot at?”

“Well, no sir, but it does happen, doesn’t it? A couple

or three inches more and Mayleen could have died back

in January. Anyhow, I figure two years and we’ll be out

of debt with enough saved up to put a good down pay-

ment on a real house. It’s worth the risk.” He took a

deep breath. “And if I do get killed, she’ll get a quarter

million in insurance. That should be enough to get Jay

through college.”

Dwight shook his head. “Do the math, Jack. Divide

a quarter million by eighteen years. Cindy won’t have

enough left to pay your son’s application fees.”

By the determined look on Jamison’s face, his mind

was clearly made up.

“So. The end of next week?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. I’m really sorry you feel you need to do this,

but notify human resources and make sure your paper-

work’s caught up.”

Jamison came to his feet. “Thank you, Major. And I

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MARGARET MARON

really do appreciate all you’ve done for me, making me

a detective and all. Maybe when I get back . . .”

“We’ll see. You’re not gone yet though, and I expect

another full week of work from you, so get out there

and see what you can dig up on the Harris murder.”

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C H A P T E R

21

It is a matter of paramount importance to the prosperity of

any community or State to have its surplus lands occupied

by an industrious, enterprising, and moral population.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Deborah Knott

Tuesday Morning, March 7

% Because I had nearly forty-five minutes to kill after

leaving Dwight and Reid, I stopped by the dis-

patcher’s desk out in the main lobby where Faye Myers

was on duty.

Faye’s in her early thirties, a heavyset blonde who strains

every seam of her uniform. She has a pretty face, a flaw-

less complexion that seems to glow from within, and the

good-hearted friendliness of a two-month-old puppy. She’s

married to Flip Myers, an equally plump EMS tech, and

between them, they have a finger on almost every emer-

gency call in the county, which means she also has the best

gossip—not from maliciousness but because she genuinely

likes people and finds them endlessly fascinating.

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MARGARET MARON

“New hairdo?” I asked with what I hoped was a guile-

less tone. “Looks nice.”

She immediately touched her shining curls. “Well,

thank you, Judge. No, it’s the same style I’ve had since

Thanksgiving. I did get a trim yesterday but I might

should’ve waited ’cause this wet weather’s making it

curl up more than usual.”

“Detective Richards tells me she goes to the Cut ’n’

Curl. You go there, too?”

“No, I just get my sister to clip it for me. She cuts

everybody in the family’s hair.”

“Lucky you,” I said. “You must save a ton of

money.”

She beamed.

“But the new stylist at the Cut ’n’ Curl did a great job

on Mayleen Richards, didn’t she? She looks like a differ-

ent person these days.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Myers gave me a conspiratorial look.

“She’s real happy right now.”

“Oh?” I encouraged.

Within moments, I was hearing how Richards had re-

cently become involved with a “real cute Mexican guy,”

who ran a landscaping business “out towards Cotton

Grove,” someone she’d met last month when investigat-

ing a shooting over that way. A Miguel Diaz. “Mayleen

calls him Mike.”

A naturalized citizen, he had been in North Carolina

for eight or nine years and had bootstrapped himself

up from day laborer to employer who ran several crews

around the area, contracting with some of the smaller

builders to landscape the new developments that were

springing up all over the county.

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HARD ROW

Faye was under the impression that he wanted to

marry Richards but that she was hanging back because

of her family.

“They’re sort of prejudiced, you know,” the dis-

patcher confided. “But I told Mayleen that’s prob-

ably just because they don’t really know any Mexicans.

Think they’re all up here to take away our jobs and get

drunk on Saturday night. Not that some of ’em don’t.

Get drunk, I mean. But Mike— Oh, wait a minute! You

know something, Judge? You actually talked to him.”

“I did?”

“That guy that stole the tractor and messed up a

bunch of yards ’cause he didn’t know how to lift the

plows? Wasn’t he in your court Friday?”

“That’s her new boyfriend?”

“No, no. Mike was there to speak up for him, least

that’s what one of the bailiffs told me anyhow.”

“Oh yes. I remember now. The Latino who said he’d

see that the rest of the damage was repaired?”

“That’s the one. It’s real nice when people take care

of their own, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t exactly recall Miguel Diaz’s face, but I did

retain an impression of responsibility and I remember

being surprised by how fluent his English was.

“Mayleen says Mike felt so sorry for the man, what

with all his troubles, that he’s hired him on after he got

kicked out of the camp he was staying at.”

“That’s right,” I said, as more of the details came

back to me. “His wife left him, didn’t she?”

“Went right back to Mexico after their baby died.”

Faye looked around to make sure no one was near and

leaned even closer. “I might not ought to be telling this,

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MARGARET MARON

but Flip was on call that night and he helped deliver the

baby and he said—”

Her phone rang then and, judging by the sudden

professional seriousness of her voice, it sounded like an

emergency for someone, so I gave her a catch-you-later

wave because Reid walked past at that moment.

He held the door for me and we walked around to

the stairs. When we reached the atrium on the ground

floor that connects the old courthouse to the new ad-

ditions, the marble tiles were slick where people had

tracked in muddy water. A custodian brought out long

runners and laid them down to cover the most direct

paths from one doorway to another before tackling the

floor with a mop.

We paused to speak to a couple of attorneys, then sat

on the edge of one of the brick planters filled with lush

green plants to finish our coffee and enjoy the rain that

was sluicing down the sides of the soaring glass above

us. At least, Reid was enjoying it. My agenda was to get

him to tell me everything he’d told Dwight.

“I suppose his daughter scoops the lot? His house-

keeper told Dwight that he was close to her. Poor Flame

Smith.”

“Not too poor,” said Reid, half-distracted by the

weather he was going to have to brave to keep an ap-

pointment back at his office. “The daughter’s the resid-

ual beneficiary, but Flame’ll get half a million. I don’t

suppose you’ve got an umbrella you could lend me?

Flame took mine and John Claude keeps his locked up

for some reason.”

I had to laugh. I know exactly why John Claude

keeps his umbrella in a locked closet and I immediately

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HARD ROW

began to chant the exasperated verse our older cousin

always quoted whenever he discovered that Reid had

once again “borrowed” his umbrella:

“The rain it raineth every day

Upon the just and unjust fellow,

But more upon the just, because

The unjust hath the just’s umbrella.”

“Very funny,” Reid said grumpily as he stood to dump

our cups in the nearest trash bin. He spotted Portland

Brewer coming up the marble steps outside and, ever

the gentleman, he rushed over to hold the heavy outer

door for her. Her small red umbrella hadn’t warded off

all the wet, but she was so angry, it’s a wonder the rain-

drops didn’t sizzle as soon as they touched any exposed

skin. “Dammit, Deborah! I thought Bo and Dwight

were going to take away all of James Braswell’s guns!”

“Huh?” I said.

“He got out of jail yesterday morning and last night

he shot up Karen’s condo.”

“What? Is she okay?”

“No, she’s freaking not okay! She’s scared out of her

mind.”

I made sympathetic noises, but Por was too wound

up to be easily calmed. The rain had curled her black

hair into tight little wire springs. Reid took her dripping

umbrella and made a show of holding it over the green

leaves.

“You in court this morning?” he asked her.

“After I get through blasting Dwight and Bo. Why?”

Too riled to give him her full attention, she continued

venting at me. “The only reason Karen’s still alive is that

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MARGARET MARON

she’s been staying at her mother’s. She could have been

killed for all they care.”

“Now wait a minute,” I said. “That’s not fair. They

can’t put a twenty-four-hour watch on her. And besides,

how do you know it was Braswell?”

“Who else would it be? You think a sweet kid who

works at a Bojangles and takes care of an invalid mother

has that kind of enemies? Hey! Where’re you going with

my umbrella?” she called as Reid pushed open the door

for one of our clerks and kept walking.

“I’ll drop it off at your office,” he called back and

hurried down the marble steps and out into the unre-

lenting rain, Portland’s umbrella a small circle of red

over his head.

As Por stormed off in one direction, I was joined on

my walk upstairs by Ally Mycroft, a prisspot clerk who

had pointedly worn my opponent’s button during the

last election whenever she had to work my courtroom.

Making polite chatter, I asked, “You working for

Judge Parker today?”

“No,” she said, with equally phony politeness. “I’ll

be with you today.”

I made a mental note to drop by Ellis Glover’s office

sometime today, see if it was me our Clerk of Court was

annoyed with or Ally Mycroft.

“In fact,” Ally said, “Mr. Glover has assigned me to

your courtroom for the rest of the week.”

In my head, Brook Benton began singing his world-

weary “Rainy Night in Georgia.”

“Lord, I feel like it’s rainin’ all over the world.”

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C H A P T E R

22

I’ve got an old mare who will quit a good pasture to go into

a poor one, and it’s just because she got into a habit of let-

ting the bars down.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Deputies McLamb and Dalton

Tuesday Morning, March 7

% “Better not block the driveway,” Deputy Raeford

McLamb said and Sam Dalton, the department’s

newest detective trainee, parked at the curb in front of a

shabby little house in sad need of paint. A white Honda

stood in the driveway. On the small porch, a young man in

a UNC hoodie with a black-and-silver backpack dangling

from his shoulder shifted his weight from one foot to the

other as an older woman carrying a big red-and-green

striped umbrella came out and locked the door behind her.

He held out his hand and she gave him the keys. Both of

them looked at the detectives suspiciously as McLamb got

out of the prowl car and approached in the pouring rain.

“Mrs. Stone?”

“Yes?” A heavyset, middle-aged black woman, she

wore a clear plastic rain bonnet over her graying hair.

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MARGARET MARON

“Colleton County Sheriff ’s Department, ma’am.

Could we step inside and talk a minute?”

Mrs. Stone shook her head. “Is this about my daddy

again?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What is it?”

“Ma’am—”

“I’m really sorry, Officer, but if I don’t go on now,

I’m gonna be late for work and they told me if I’m late

again, they’re gonna lay me off. Whatever you got to

say’s just gonna have to wait till this evening. I’ll be

back at five.”

“Where do you work? Maybe we could drive you?”

She paused indecisively and the teenager jingled the

keys impatiently. “Let ’em drive you, Mom. I’m gonna

be late for school myself if you don’t.”

“All right,” she said, but as the boy dashed through

the rain to the Honda, she called after him. “You bet-

ter be on time picking me up today, you hear? You not

there when I come out, you’re not getting the car for a

week. You hear me, Ennis?”

But he was already backing out of the drive and into

the street.

“Boys!” she said, shaking her head. “Soon as they

turn sixteen, they start climbing Fool’s Hill. Let ’em

get to talking to their friends, flirting around with the

girls, and they forget all about what they’re supposed to

be doing and where they’re supposed to be. I believe to

goodness he had more sense when he was six than he’s

got now that he’s sixteen.”

McLamb smiled, having heard the same words from

his own mother when he first started driving. He mo-

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HARD ROW

tioned to Dalton, who drove up to the porch so that

they wouldn’t get too wet. McLamb helped Mrs. Stone

into the front seat and he climbed in back.

“So what’s this about?” Mrs. Stone asked after she

had told them where she worked and they were under

way.

As gently as possible, McLamb told her that the med-

ical examiner over in Chapel Hill was pretty sure that

her father’s hand had been detached from his wrist not

by an animal, but by human intervention.

Mrs. Stone turned in the seat and faced him, her face

outraged. “Somebody cut off my daddy’s hand?”

“Well, not the way you’re probably thinking. Mostly

they say the flesh was so—” He searched for an inof-

fensive word that would not sicken the woman. “—so

degraded, that the hand probably pretty much pulled

loose by itself when it was lifted, but there was a liga-

ment that was holding it on and when the pathologist

looked at the edges under a microscope, he could tell

that it was definitely a recent cut. You’re his only rela-

tive, right?”

“Me and Ennis, yes.”

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted

your dad dead?”

Mrs. Stone shook her head. “The only person who

couldn’t get along with him was my mother and she passed

six years ago, come June. You can let me out right here,”

she said and opened the door as soon as Dalton slowed the

car to a stop in front of the motel where she worked.

McLamb hopped out to hold the door for her. She

handed him her umbrella and waited for him to open it.

“Mrs. Stone—”

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MARGARET MARON

“I told you. I can’t be late today!” she snapped and

hurried inside.

“You didn’t ask for her alibi,” Dalton said, handing

him some paper towels to mop the worst of the rain

from his jacket.

“Yeah, I know. Looks like we have to catch her this

evening after all.”

From Mrs. Stone’s place of work to Sunset Meadows

Rest Home at the southern edge of Black Creek was

just over ten minutes and Dalton parked the car as close

as he could get it to the wide porch that ran the full

width of the building.

“Here’s good,” said McLamb. A slender man of

medium height, he prided himself on staying in shape

and usually looked for opportunities to take a few extra

steps, but not when it was raining this hard. His navy

blue nylon jacket had COLLETON CO. SHERIFF’S DEPT.

stenciled in white on the back and he pulled the hood

low over his face before making a dash for it.

Dalton followed close behind in an identical jacket.

Younger and chunkier than McLamb, at twenty-four, he

was still kid enough to be excited by his recent promo-

tion to the detective squad. “Provisional promotion,”

he reminded himself as he took a good look at the facil-

ity accused of letting one of its patients wander off to

drown back before Christmas.

“Don’t just look at what’s there,” McLamb had told

him on the drive out. “Look at what’s not there, too.”

Although certified and licensed by the state, the nursing

home had begun as a mom-and-pop operation and was

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a drab place at best. Built of cinder blocks, the utilitarian

beige exterior was at least three years overdue for a new

coat of paint. The shades and curtains looked sun-faded,

and the uninspired shrubs that lined the porch needed

work, too. Cutting them back to waist height would make

them bush up at the base and would also allow anyone

standing at the doorway an unobstructed view of the park-

ing lot. As it was, the privet hedge was so tall and strag-

gly that a casual observer might overlook someone leaving

without authorization, especially if it was getting on for

dark on one of the shortest days of the year.

The porch was a ten-foot-wide concrete slab set flush

with both the paved entrance walk and the sills of the

double front doors beyond. Easy wheelchair access,

thought Dalton, but also easy for unsteady old feet to

walk off without stumbling.

The fifteen or so rocking chairs that were grouped

along the porch were worn and weather stained, but

they were a thoughtful amenity for men and women

who had grown up when porches were a place for social-

izing, for shelling beans, for watching children play, for

resting after lunch in the middle of a busy day. Indeed,

despite the cool spring morning and the pouring rain,

three of the rockers were occupied by residents swad-

dled in blankets from head to toe who watched their

approach with bright-eyed interest.

Not a lot of money to spread around on paint and

gardeners, thought Dalton, but enough money to pay

for staff who would help their patients out to the porch

and make sure they were warm enough to enjoy the

fresh air, even to tucking the blankets around their feet.

The nursing home where his grandmother had recovered

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MARGARET MARON

from her hip replacement was beautifully landscaped

and maintained, but there had been a persistent stench

of urine on her hall and she complained that her feet

were always cold. Somehow he was not surprised to fol-

low McLamb into the building and smell nothing more

than a slight medicinal odor overlaid with the pungency

of a pine-scented floor cleaner.

Immediately in front of them was a reception area

that doubled as a nursing station. Long halls on either

side led away from the entrance lobby with a shorter hall

behind. Sam Dalton soon learned that Sunset Meadows

Rest Home was basically one long rectangle topped by a

square in back of the middle section to accommodate a

dining room, lounge, kitchen, and laundry. Each of the

forty “guest” rooms held two or three beds and there

was a waiting list.

“Does that sound like we’re careless and neglectful?”

demanded Mrs. Belinda Franks, the owner-manager. A

large black woman of late middle age, her hair had been

left natural and was clipped short. She wore red ear-

rings, black slacks, and a bright red zippered sweater

over a white turtleneck. The sweater made a cheerful

splash of color in this otherwise drab setting. She pos-

sessed a warm smile but that had been replaced by a

look of indignation as she glared up at the two deputies

from her chair behind the tall counter.

“Would people be lining up to put their loved ones

here if they thought we were going to let them come

to harm?”

“No, ma’am,” Raeford McLamb assured her. “And

we’re not here to find fault or put the blame on you or

your people, Mrs. Franks. We came to ask for your help.”

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“Like how?”

“We’re now treating Mr. Mitchiner’s demise as a sus-

picious death.”

“Suspicious?” Her brow furrowed. “Somebody took

that sweet old man off and killed him?”

“Too soon to say for sure, but someone did disturb

his body after he was dead, and we need to find out who

and why. I know you and your staff gave statements at

the time, but if we could just go over them again?”

Mrs. Franks sighed and rolled her chair back to a

bank of filing cabinets, from which she extracted a ma-

nila folder.

Standing with his elbows on the counter between

them, McLamb looked in both directions. The front

edge of the counter was on a line with the inner walls

of the hall. Although he could clearly see the exit doors

at the end of each hallway, there was no way someone

behind the desk could.

“I know, I know,” Mrs. Franks said wearily when

McLamb voiced that observation. “We’re going to

curve this desk further out into the lobby this spring

when we get a little ahead so that anybody on duty can

see these three doors. Right now, though, we had to

borrow money to set up the monitor cameras.”

She motioned to the men to come around back of

the counter where a split screen showed the three doors

now under electronic watch.

“What about a back door?”

“That’s kept locked all the time now except when

somebody’s actually using it.”

“But it used to be unlocked before Mr. Mitchiner

walked off?”

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MARGARET MARON

She nodded. “You have to understand that we’re not

a skilled nursing facility. Most of our people are just

old and a little forgetful and not able to keep living by

themselves, and we have a few with special problems.

My first daughter was a Downs baby and we couldn’t

find a place that would treat her right. That’s how my

husband and I started this home. We wanted to take

care of Benitha right here and have a little help once

she got too big for us to handle. We still have a cou-

ple of Downs folks, the ones who can’t live on their

own, but mostly it’s old people who come to us. We

see that everybody takes the medications their doctors

have prescribed and we keep them clean and dry, but

we’re not equipped for serious problems and we only

have one LPN on staff. The rest are aides who have had

first aid training, CPR, that sort of thing. We wouldn’t

have kept Mr. Mitchiner here except that his family was

always in and out to help with him and he had a sweet

nature. Eventually, he would have had to transfer into

a place with a higher level of care. They knew that. But

this was convenient for now. His grandson could ride

his bicycle over after school and his daughter could stop

in before or after work.”

“Who last saw him that day?” asked McLamb.

“We just don’t know,” the woman said, with exas-

peration both for the question and her lack of a defini-

tive answer. “We don’t make visitors sign in and out.

We want people to feel free to come in and sit with

their loved ones, bring them a piece of watermelon in

the summertime or some hot homemade soup in the

winter. Put pretty sheets on their bed. Bring them a

new pair of bedroom slippers. I think it makes them feel

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HARD ROW

good to know that they can pop in any time to check

up on us because we have nothing to hide. It’s just like

they were running in and out of their grandmother’s

house, you know?”

The men nodded encouragingly and Dalton said,

“Sounds like a friendly place.”

“It is a friendly place. You ask anybody. The only per-

son with any complaints is Miss Letty Harper. She says

our cook scrambles the eggs too dry, but that’s because

she always wants a fried egg with a runny yolk. All the

same, Ramsey’ll cook one like that for her if he’s not

too jammed up.”

She opened the folder and took out copies of the state-

ments she and her staff had given back in December.

“Mary Rowe. She’s due back any minute. She gave him

his heart pills that morning. Then Ennis Stone. That’s

his grandson. He just got his driver’s license around

Thanksgiving and he took Mr. Mitchiner out for a ride

and got him a cheeseburger for lunch. That man did

love cheeseburgers. Then Ennis brought him back here

and put him in his room for a nap. His room was down

there on the end and Ennis usually came in that end

’cause it’s closer. He could park right next to the door.

His roommate, Mr. Thomas Bell, says Mr. Mitchiner

was asleep on the bed when he came back to take a nap

himself; but he wasn’t there when he woke up.”

“No one else saw Mitchiner that afternoon?” Dalton

asked, thumbing through the statements McLamb had

read back in December.

“Not to remember. But it’s not like anyone would

unless it was his family. He was in his own world most

of the time, so he didn’t have any special friends here.

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MARGARET MARON

A real nice, easygoing man, but you couldn’t carry on

much of a conversation with him. He kept thinking Mr.

Bell was his cousin and he’s white as you are.”

“Could we speak to Mr. Bell?” McLamb asked.

“Well, you can,” she said doubtfully, “but he’s had

another little stroke since then and his mind’s even

fuzzier than it was at Christmas.”

She led them into the lounge where several men and

women—mostly black, but some white—sat in rockers

or wheelchairs to watch television, something on the

Discovery Channel, judging by the brightly colored fish

that swam across the screen. In earlier years, Mr. Bell had

probably been strongly built with a full head of hair and

shrewd blue eyes. Now he was like a half-collapsed bal-

loon with most of the air gone. His muscles sagged, his

shoulders slumped, his head was round and shiny with

a few scattered wisps of white hair, his blue eyes were

pale and rheumy. Large brown liver spots splotched his

face and scalp.

This is what ninety-four looks like, Sam Dalton told

himself. Pity and dread mingled in his assessment as Mr.

Bell struggled to his feet at Mrs. Franks’s urging. We all

want to live to be old, but, please, God! Not like this! Not

me!

The old man steadied himself on his walker and obe-

diently went with them to the dining room where the

deputies could question him without the distraction of

the television.

While Dalton steadied one of the straight chairs,

McLamb and Mrs. Franks helped him lower himself

down. He kept one hand on the walker though and

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HARD ROW

looked at them with incurious eyes as Mrs. Franks tried

to explain that these two men were sheriff ’s deputies.

“They need you to tell them about Fred Mitchiner,”

she said, enunciating each word clearly.

“Who?”

“Fred Mitchiner. Your roommate.”

“Fred? He’s gone.”

“I know, sweetie, but did you see him go?”

“Who?”

“Remember Fred? He had the bed next to you.”

Mr. Bell frowned. “Jack?”

“No, sweetie. Before Jack. Fred. Fred Mitchiner.”

Silence, then unexpected laughter shook the frail

body. “My cousin.”

“That’s right.” Mrs. Franks beamed. “That was Fred.”

“Where’d he go, anyhow? I ain’t seen him lately.”

Raeford McLamb leaned in close. “When did you last

see him, Mr. Bell? Your cousin Fred?”

“He ain’t really my cousin, you know. Crazy ol’ man.

He’s blacker’n you are.” He paused and looked up at

Mrs. Franks. “Idn’t anybody else gonna eat today?”

Mrs. Franks sighed. “It’s only nine-thirty, sweetie.

Dinner won’t be ready till twelve.”

McLamb sat back in frustration and Dalton pulled his

chair around so that his face was level with Mr. Bell’s.

“Mr. Bell? Tom?”

“Thomas,” Mrs. Franks murmured.

“Thomas? Tell us about the last time you saw Fred.”

The old man stared at him, then reached out with

a shaky hand to cup Dalton’s smooth cheek. Sudden

tears filled his eyes. “Jimmy?” His voice cracked with

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MARGARET MARON

remembered grief. “Jimmy, boy! They told me you was

dead.”

In the end, Sam Dalton had to help Mr. Bell to his room.

The confused nonagenarian would not let go of his arm

until they persuaded him to lie down on the bed and rest.

Eventually, he calmed down enough to close his eyes and

release his unexpectedly strong grip on Dalton’s arm.

“Who’s Jimmy?” Dalton asked as he walked back

down the hall with Mrs. Franks to rejoin McLamb.

“His son. He got killed in a car wreck when he was

thirty-one. I don’t think Mr. Bell ever got over it.”

Back in the lobby, at the central desk, McLamb was

interviewing Mary Rowe, the LPN who oversaw the

medication schedules. A brisk, middle-aged blonde who

was going gray naturally, Rowe wore a white lab coat

over black slacks and sweater. She shook her head when

told that Mitchiner’s death might not have been as ac-

cidental as they first thought, but she was no more help

than Mr. Bell.

“I’m sorry, Officers, but like I said back when he

walked away, I gave him his meds right after breakfast

and I think I saw him in the lounge a little later, but

there was nothing new on his chart so I didn’t take any

special notice of him.”

It was the same story with the housekeeping staff

who cleaned, did laundry, and helped serve the plates

at mealtimes.

“I made his bed same as always while he be having

breakfast,” said one young woman, “and somebody did

lay on it and pull up the blanket between then and when

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they did the bed check, but I can’t swear it was him.

Some of our residents, they’re right bad for just laying

down on any bed that’s empty, whether it’s their own

or somebody else’s.”

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C H A P T E R

23

It takes time to revolutionize the habits of thought and ac-

tion into which a people have crystallized by the practice of

generations.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Tuesday Morning (continued)

% “What took you so long?” Mayleen Richards asked

when Jack Jamison finally slid in beside her in the

unmarked car they were using this morning.

“Handing in my resignation,” he said tersely.

She laughed as she turned on the windshield wipers

and shifted from park to drive, but the laughter died

after taking a second look at his face.

“Jeeze! You’re not joking, are you?”

“Serious as a gunshot to the chest,” he said, in a grim-

mer tone than she had ever heard him use.

“So where’re you going? Raleigh? Charlotte?”

“Texas first, then Iraq if I pass the physical.”

Richards was appalled. “Are you out of your gourd?”

She had seen the flyers, had even visited the web sites.

“You’re going to become a hired mercenary?”

He flushed and said defensively, “I’m not signing

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up for security. I’m signing up to help train Iraqis to

become good police officers. And in case you haven’t

noticed, you and I are already hired mercenaries if that

means keeping the peace and putting bad guys out of

business.”

“We don’t have a license to kill over here,” she

snapped. “And the bad guys aren’t lying in wait to am-

bush us for no reason. I can’t believe you’re going to

do this.”

“Believe it,” he said. “I’m just lucky I can go as a

hired hand. I can quit and come home. Soldiers can’t

and they get paid squat.”

Richards did not respond. Just kept the car moving

westward through the rain.

Eventually her silence got to Jamison. “Look, in two

years, I’ll have a quarter-million dollars. Enough for

Cindy and me to pay off all our bills and build a house.

And it’s not like Jay’ll even know I’m gone. I’ll be back

before he’s walking and talking good.”

“Be sure you get one of those life-size pictures of

yourself before you go,” she said angrily. “Cindy can

glue it to foam board and cut it out and Jay can have

his own Flat Daddy for when you get blown up by a car

bomb.”

“That’s not very damn funny, Mayleen.”

“I didn’t mean for it to be.”

“Easy for you to talk,” he said resentfully. “No kids,

your dad and mom both well and working. You’ve even

got brothers and a sister to help out if one of them gets

sick or dies.”

His words cut her more than he could ever realize,

Mayleen thought. No kids. No red-haired, brown-

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MARGARET MARON

skinned babies. Because if she did have kids, then she

would have no brothers and sister. No mother or father

either. They had made that very clear.

She had gone down to Black Creek last night expect-

ing to celebrate a brother’s birthday and they had been

waiting, primed and ready to pounce. No nieces or

nephews, no in-laws around the birthday table, just her

parents, her two brothers, and her sister, Shirlee. Her

mother had been crying.

“What’s wrong?” she had asked, immediately alarmed,

wondering who was hurt, who might be dying.

“There’s been talk,” her father said, his face even

more somber than when she had told them nine years

ago that she was divorcing a man they had known and

liked since childhood, a hard-working, steady man who

didn’t use drugs, didn’t get drunk, didn’t hit her or run

around on her. That had been rough on them. There

had never been a divorce in their family, they reminded

her. Leave her husband? Leave a good town job that

had air-conditioning and medical benefits after growing

up in the tobacco fields where her father and brothers

still labored? Ask Sheriff Poole to give her a job where

she’d carry a gun and wear an ugly uniform instead of

ladylike dresses and pretty shoes?

“You ain’t gay, are you?” her brother Steve had asked

bluntly.

She had slapped his freckled face for that. Hard.

“What kind of talk, Dad?”

“Somebody saw you at a movie house in Raleigh,” he

said. “They say you was with a Mexican and he had his

arm around you. Is it true?”

“Is he Mexican?” Steve demanded.

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HARD ROW

“Would that make a difference?” she said coldly.

“Damn straight it would!” said her brother Tom.

“I’m thirty-three years old. I’m divorced. I’m a sher-

iff ’s deputy. Who I choose to see is my own business.”

“Oh dear Jesus!” her mother wailed, bursting into

tears again. “It is true!”

Her father’s shoulders had slumped and for the first

time, she realized that he was getting old. Suddenly

there was more white than red in his hair and the lines

in his face seemed to have deepened overnight without

her noticing.

While her brothers fumed and her sister and mother

twittered, he held up his hand for silence.

“Mayleen, honey, you know we’re not prejudiced.

If you’re seeing this man, then he’s probably a good

person.”

“All men are created equal, Dad. That’s what you

always told us.”

He nodded. “And they’ve got an equal right to ev-

erything anybody else does. But there’s a reason God

created people different, honey. If He intended us to

be just one color, with one kind of skin and one kind

of hair, then that’s how He would have made us. He

meant for each of us to keep our differences and stay

with our own.”

“So how come you didn’t marry another redhead,

Dad?”

It was an old family joke, but no one laughed tonight.

“That ain’t the same, and you know it, honey.”

“It is the same,” she said hotly. “Mike’s skin’s a

little darker than ours and his hair is black, but it’s no

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MARGARET MARON

different from Steve and Tom and Shirlee being freck-

led all over and marrying people with no freckles.”

“We’re white!” Steve snarled. “And we married white

people. White Americans. I bet he’s not even here le-

gally, is he? He probably wants to marry you so he can

get his citizenship.”

“He’s been a citizen for years,” she snarled back.

“And believe it or not, butthead, he wants to marry me

because he loves me. He even thinks I’m beautiful. So

maybe you’re right. Maybe there is something wrong

with him. Maybe he’s loco.”

But all they heard was marry.

“Oh Mayleen, baby, you can’t marry him!” her

mother sobbed.

“You do and you’n forget about ever setting foot in

my house again!” Steve had shouted.

“Shirlee?”

Her sister’s eyes dropped, but then her chin came up.

“Steve’s right, Mayleen. I’d be ashamed to call you my

sister.”

“Daddy?”

She saw the pain in his face. “I’m sorry, honey, but

that’s the way it is.”

“Fine,” she had said and immediately turned on her

heel and walked out.

With each absorbed by personal problems, Richards

and Jamison drove the rest of the way in silence, a silence

underlined by the back-and-forth swish of their wind-

shield wipers. Just before they reached the westernmost

of the Harris Farms, they met a camera truck from one

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HARD ROW

of the Raleigh stations. A long shot of the shed was all

they could have gotten though because Major Bryant

had posted a uniformed officer there to keep the site

secured from gawkers. With rain still pouring from the

charcoal gray sky, they passed the main house and went

first to the white frame bungalow occupied by the farm

manager. Richards stopped near the back door, and at

the sound of their horn, Sid Lomax walked out on the

porch and motioned for them to drive under the car

shelter, a set of iron posts set in a concrete slab and

topped by long sheets of corrugated tin.

“I was afraid you might be those reporters back,” he

said as Percy Denning pulled in right beside them with

his field kit in the trunk.

“We need a list of everybody on the place,” Richards

told Lomax when the courtesies were out of the way.

“And Deputy Denning’s here to take everybody’s finger-

prints.”

“He was dumb enough to leave prints on the axe

handle?” Lomax asked.

“And on the padlock, too,” Denning said with grim

satisfaction.

“If you want to start with the names, come on in to

my office,” Lomax said and led the way back into the

house.

The deep screened porch held a few straight wooden

chairs. A couple of clean metal ashtrays sat on the ledges.

No swing, no rockers, no cheery welcome mat by either

of the two doors. The one on the left was half glass

and no curtains blocked a view of a kitchen so spartan

and uncluttered, so lacking in soft touches of color or

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MARGARET MARON

superfluous knickknacks, that Richards instantly knew

that no woman lived here.

The door on the right opened into a large and equally

tidy office. More straight wooden chairs stood in front

of a wide desk where an open laptop and some manila

file folders lay. The top angled around to the side to

hold a sleek combination printer, fax, and copier. A

lamp sat on a low file cabinet beneath the side window

to complete the office’s furnishings. Both the desk and

the worn leather chair behind it were positioned so that

Lomax could work with his back to the rear wall and see

someone at the door before they knocked.

He sat, pulled the laptop closer and tapped on the

keys. “I’m assuming you’re only interested in the peo-

ple working here now? Not the ones who moved to the

other farms?”

“Everybody here on that last Sunday you saw your

boss,” said Richards.

“Right.”

More tapping, then the printer came to life with a

twinkle of lights and an electronic hum as sheets of

paper began to slide smoothly into the front tray.

“Two copies enough?”

“Could you make it three?” Richards asked.

“No problem.”

They waited while Lomax aligned the pages and sta-

pled each set.

“The first list, that’s the names of everybody working

here on the first of January. The ones with Xs in front

of them are those we fired or who quit.”

“Any of them leave mad?”

“Yeah, but Harris didn’t have anything to do with

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them, if that’s what you’re asking. I was the one fired

their sorry asses.” His fingers touched the names in

question. “These two were always drunk. This one was

a troublemaker. Couldn’t get along with anybody. This

one went off his nut. Those five just quit. Said they

were going back to Mexico.”

Richards and Denning made notations of his remarks

on the pages he’d given them. “And the rest?” she

asked.

“They’re the ones we moved over to one of the other

farms the day after I last saw him. That was Monday,

the twentieth of February. The last page is the people

still here.”

Again, they marked the pages and when they were

finished, the farm manager held out his hands. “Want

to take my prints first?”

“Why don’t we go down to the camp and do them all

at once?” Denning said.

“Fine. I don’t know if everybody’s there, though.

Hard as it’s raining, we couldn’t get the tractors into

the field so I gave everyone the morning off.”

As migrant camps go, this one was almost luxurious

compared to some the deputies had seen. It reminded

Richards of motels from the fifties and sixties that

sprouted along the old New York–to-Florida routes

through the state before the interstates bypassed them—

long cinder-block rectangles falling into disrepair.

Here, communal bathrooms with shower stalls and

toilets, one for each sex, lay at opposite ends of each

rectangle. The men’s bunkhouse was a long room lined

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MARGARET MARON

with metal cots. Most were topped by stained mattresses

bare of any linens, but some still had their blankets and

pillows and a man was asleep in one of them. At the far

end was a bank of metal lockers. Most of the doors hung

open, but a few were still secured by locks of various

sizes and styles. At the near end was a battered refrig-

erator, cookstove, and sink. An open space in the center

held a motley collection of tables and chairs where three

more men were watching a Spanish-language program.

“¿Dónde está Juan?” Lomax asked.

Richards was pleased to realize that she could catch

the gist of the reply, which was that the crew chief and

his wife, along with another woman and two men, had

gone into Dobbs to do laundry and buy groceries. And

when Lomax could not seem to make them understand

what the deputies wanted, she was able to explain with

the generous use of hand gestures.

They knew, of course, that el patrón had been mur-

dered in the shed over by the big house?

“Sí, sí.”

Whoever did such an awful thing had left fingerprints

on the axe handle, she explained, so they were there to

take everyone’s prints.

At this, the men exchanged furtive looks and started

to protest, but Richards tried to reassure them by prom-

ising that they were not there to check for green cards

or work visas and the fingerprints would be destroyed as

soon as they were compared with the killer’s prints.

They were uneasy and highly suspicious, but Lomax

went first and that helped convince them that they were

not being singled out. As he wiped the ink from his

fingers, the others came forward one by one and let

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HARD ROW

Denning ink their fingertips and roll each one across

the proper square on the white cards. Someone woke up

the man in the cot. Reeking of alcohol, he, too, shuffled

over to give his prints.

When Denning started to pack up their cards, Richards

said, “No. I told them they’d be destroyed as soon as

you did the comparison, so why don’t you go ahead and

do it now while we’re questioning them, okay?”

Grumbling, Denning went out for a powerful magni-

fying glass and his field microscope and set to work. He

had blown up the prints of the killer and marked the most

prominent identifiers on each print—the forks, eyes,

bridges, spurs, deltas, and island ridges that are easiest

to spot. From the position of the killer’s fingerprints on

the bloody axe handle, he was able to say which were

the three middle ones, which meant he could look for

conspicuous markers on one of the workers’ three right

fingers and see if they matched one on the killer’s.

While he squinted at the lines and ridges, Lomax un-

locked a nearby door that opened onto quarters for a

couple with children. It was marginally better than the

bunkhouse: a good-sized eat-in kitchen that also func-

tioned as a den with thrift store couch and chairs, two

tiny bedrooms, a half-bath with sink and toilet.

“Mrs. Harris comes out a couple of times a season to

check on things,” Lomax told Jamison and Richards.

“Makes sure the stoves and toilets and refrigerators

work. Has the Goodwill store deliver a load of furniture

every year or so. She’s good about that.”

“Even after their separation?” asked Jamison.

“Oh yeah. The big house isn’t part of Harris Farms,

but the camp and the sheds are. She was over here the

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MARGARET MARON

day we moved the others to Farm Number Three to see

what was going to need replacing or fixing.”

“Was Harris around?”

“Like I told Major Bryant, ma’am. I didn’t see him

after Sunday dinner at the Cracker Barrel. I figured he

knew she was going to be here, so he just stayed out of

her way. She’s got a right sharp tongue on her, if you

know what I mean.”

Despite their earlier friction, Jamison raised an eye-

brow to Richards and she gave a half nod to indicate

that Mrs. Harris’s presence had registered. Someone

else to check on.

In the meantime, she set her legal pad on the table

before her, looked at the list, and asked Lomax to send

in Jésus Vazquez.

An hour later, the two deputies had finished question-

ing all four men, who each swore that he knew noth-

ing about the murder. They were all vague about that

Sunday, although they remembered Monday very clearly

since that was when their friends left on the trucks, the

same day that la señora swept through the camp. No,

they had not seen el patrón either day.

Who hated him?

Shrugs. Why would anybody hate him? He was the

big boss— el gran jefe. He gave orders to Lomax, Lomax

implemented them. Only one man admitted ever speak-

ing to Harris and that had been months ago. The work

was hard, but that’s what they were there for. Their

quarters were okay. They got paid on time. Lomax and

Juan between them kept the camp pretty stable because

Juan had children. So no open drug use. No drunken

displays of violence or excessive profanity.

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The sheds? Why would anyone go over there on

Sunday? Sunday was a day off in the wintertime. Those

who were leaving had spent most of the day packing up.

Those who were staying had either played cards or gone

into town or visited a club—El Toro Negro in Dobbs or

La Cantina Rosa in Cotton Grove.

By midday, the deputies had finished with their ques-

tions and Denning had cleared all four men. Their relief

was evident when Denning tore the fingerprint cards

to shreds. Nevertheless one man held out his hand for

the scraps and stuffed them into the half-empty mug of

coffee on the table.

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24

A farmer’s wife adds comfort which only a certain quality

of feminine ingenuity can devise and execute.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

Dwight Bryant

Late Tuesday Morning, March 7

% Although Dwight would always prefer fieldwork

to clearing his desk, paper had piled up that needed

his attention and a rainy March day was as good a time

as any to tackle it. After deploying his detectives, he

spent the morning reading reports, filling out forms,

updating the duty rosters, and earmarking things that

Bo needed to see.

Time to get a little more aggressive about filling the

empty slots in the department, too, he thought. Even

if Dalton’s provisional promotion were made perma-

nent, they were still going to be short two detectives if

Jamison really did leave. Three officers were needed in

the patrol division and they could really stand to beef

up Narcotics. Maybe he and Bo ought to go talk to

the criminal justice classes out at Colleton Community.

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Hell, maybe they should even start trolling in the high

schools.

By midday, the most pressing chores were behind him

and when Deborah called around 12:30, he agreed to

splash over and join her at a nearby soup and sandwich

place where she was already having lunch.

This close to the courthouse, the café was always

busy. The sky had begun to lighten, but there was still

enough rain to make courthouse personnel reluctant to

walk very far. The place was jammed today with every

seat taken and a long line waiting at the counter. As

soon as he reached the table where Deborah and an-

other judge were seated, he sensed her barely concealed

excitement.

“Here, Dwight,” said Judge Parker, setting his dishes

and utensils back on his tray. “Take my seat. I’m fin-

ished.”

“You sure?”

“Just holding it for you, son.”

“Thanks, Luther,” said Deborah, as the older man

rose. “And I really appreciate it.”

He laughed and white teeth flashed in his chocolate

brown face. “Just remember that you owe me one.”

“Owe him one for what?” Dwight asked, sliding into

the chair on the other side of the narrow table. She was

wearing the cropped blue wool jacket that echoed her

clear blue eyes. Around her neck, gleaming against her

white sweater, was the thin gold chain with the outline

of a small heart encrusted with diamond chips that she

had worn almost every day since the night he gave it

to her.

“He’s going to ask Ellis Glover to assign Ally Mycroft

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MARGARET MARON

to him for the rest of the week. Get her out of my court-

room.”

Dwight grinned, knowing how that particular clerk

irritated Deborah. “So what’s up?”

“It’s—” She paused, then gave an exasperated, “Look,

something odd happened yesterday. I didn’t give it a

second thought at the time, but it must have registered

on my subconscious and talking about the murder with

Luther just now made me remember, which is why I

called you. And I know we said I wouldn’t stick my

nose in your work and you wouldn’t complicate mine,

but— Oh God! Sorry. I’m babbling, aren’t I? Here,

have the rest of my soup.”

“Why don’t I just get my own?” he said, amused that

she was taking their agreement so seriously.

“Because you might not want to wait on the line.

Because maybe I’m seeing mountains where there’s not

even an anthill, but I had a migrant in court yesterday

for a first appearance. Simple possession. He lives at the

camp out there at the old Buckley place. One of the

Harris Farms workers.”

“And?”

“And I asked him through the interpreter if he knew

Buck Harris. He said he did, but only by sight. Then

he said, ‘Es muerto, no?’ or something like that, but I

didn’t think twice about it because you’d just told me

that the torso belonged to his boss, and besides, I got

distracted by a screaming woman and a crying baby.”

“Well, damn!” said Dwight, immediately recognizing

the significance of what she was saying.

“Right. How did he know Harris was dead? He’d

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been in jail since Saturday night. Even you didn’t know

it was Harris till yesterday.”

“Where’s this guy now?”

“Still over there in your jail so far as I know. I set his

bond, appointed him an attorney, but unless he made

bail, he’s still there. His name is Rafael Sanaugustin,”

she said and scribbled it on a napkin. “And for what

it’s worth, I got the impression that he wasn’t really in-

volved, that it was more like something he’d heard and

wanted confirmed.”

After reading the name, Dwight tucked the napkin in

his shirt pocket. “Who’d you appoint?”

“Millard King.”

He finished the rest of her vegetable soup in three

spoonfuls and pushed back in the chair. “Thanks, shug.

And I’m probably going to regret saying it, but any

time your subconscious throws up something like this,

nose away, okay?”

She cut her eyes at him as he stood. “Really?”

“Just don’t abuse it,” he warned, looking as stern as

he could in the face of her sudden smile.

The rain was now a thin drizzle as Dwight took the

courthouse steps two at a time and cut through the

atrium to ring for the elevator that connected the third-

floor courtrooms with the Sheriff ’s Department and the

county jail down in the basement. To his bemusement,

when the doors slid open, there was the same attorney

Deborah had appointed to defend that migrant.

Millard King had the blond and beefy good looks

of a second-string college football player. Courthouse

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MARGARET MARON

gossip had him engaged to a Hillsborough debutante,

the daughter of a well-connected appellate judge. King

was said to be politically ambitious, but no one yet had

a handle on whether that meant he wanted to run for

governor, the North Carolina Assembly, or the US

Senate. As he was only twenty-eight, it was thought

that he was waiting for a case that would give him big-

fish name recognition in Colleton County’s small pond.

Besides, said the cattier speculators, his sharp-tongued

wife-to-be would probably have a thought or two on

the subject.

He nodded to Dwight as the chief deputy stepped in

beside him. “Bryant. How’s it going?”

“Fine. Talk to you a minute?”

“Sure. I was just on my way down to the jail.”

“To see”— Dwight pulled out the napkin Deborah

had given him —“Rafael Sanaugustin?”

“How’d you know?”

“That’s where I was headed myself. I need to have a

talk with your client.”

“About those two little rocks? That’s hardly worth

messing with, is it? Unless you think he’s part of some-

thing bigger?”

“That’s what I want to ask him. I’ll call around and

see if we can find someone to translate.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” King said with an air

of smug complacency. “I’m pretty fluent.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve studied Spanish since high school. My room-

mate in college was Cuban and we spent our junior year

in Spain. The way things were going even back then, I

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figured it wouldn’t hurt to be able to speak to voters

directly if I ever got in the game.”

Heretofore, Dwight had paid scant attention to ru-

mors that the debutante had cut King out of the pack to

further her own aspirations. Having been there himself

in his first marriage, he had felt a stab of sympathy for

King, a sympathy that was now plummeting to the base-

ment faster than the elevator.

If King had fixed his eyes on the prize as early as high

school, maybe it was a match made in heaven after all,

Dwight decided, and a spurt of happiness shot through

him as he thought of his life with Deborah. He could

almost feel sorry for the younger man. Would the sat-

isfaction of reaching even the highest office in the land

equal the pleasure of planting trees with a woman you

loved?

They were almost too late. Three Latinos were there

to bail Rafael Sanaugustin out—two women and a

man—and they were just finishing up the paperwork

when Dwight called over their shoulders that he was

here with Sanaugustin’s attorney to see the prisoner.

“Five minutes and y’all would’ve missed him,” the

officer said and explained why.

King stepped forward and introduced himself in

Spanish that sounded to Dwight every bit as fluent as

he had earlier bragged.

Wearing jeans and wool jackets, the three looked

back at him impassively. The women were bareheaded

and appeared to be in their early thirties; the man wore

a brown Stetson and was at least ten years older. When

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MARGARET MARON

he spoke, it was to Dwight. “Juan Santos, crew chief at

Harris Farms.”

“Sanaugustin is a member of your crew?” Dwight

asked.

The man nodded.

“You were at the farm yesterday? On the tractor?”

Again he nodded.

“One of these women related to him?”

Santos nodded to the shorter woman. “His wife.”

“Please tell her that I’m sorry, but she’s going to have

to wait a little longer. I need to question him first.”

Both women immediately tugged on Santos’s arms

anxiously, speaking so rapidly that the only words

Dwight caught were los niños.

He shook off their hands and before Millard King

could translate, said, “They say we cannot wait long.

The children come home at three-thirty.”

Dwight glanced at his watch: 12:56. “We’ll try to be

brief.”

“How long?” said Santos. “We’ll go to the grocery

store and come back.”

“Fifteen or twenty minutes for me, if he cooperates,”

Dwight said. “What about you, King?”

“Fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Bueno,” Santos said.

Sanaugustin’s wife protested sharply, but the crew

chief herded them both out of the office and the jailer

brought Sanaugustin down to the interview room.

When the migrant worker came strolling in, he was

obviously surprised to see two Anglos instead of his

friends. According to his booking sheet, Sanaugustin

was five-eight and thirty-three years old. He had straight

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HARD ROW

black hair, wary dark eyes, a prominent nose, and a small

scar on his left cheek. His jeans, black sweatshirt, and

the unbuttoned plaid wool lumberjack shirt that topped

them were all a little worse for the wear after three nights

in jail. He hesitated in the doorway, but the jailer nudged

him inside and closed the door behind him.

Dwight gestured for him to take a seat and waited

while Millard King explained that he was the attorney

the judge had appointed to represent him yesterday and

that he was here to discuss those charges, but first this

officer, Major Bryant, had some questions for him.

Dwight had procured a tape recorder from the front

desk and as he set it up, King frowned. “What’s this

about, Bryant?”

“Ask him to state his name and address, please,”

Dwight said pleasantly.

Both men complied and Dwight added the date and

the names of those present.

“How long has he worked for Harris Farms?”

“Two years.”

“How did he know that Buck Harris was dead?”

They had released the identity of the mutilated body

last night, so it had been all over the morning news.

Nevertheless, Millard King drew himself up and said,

“What? Wait a minute, here, Bryant. You accusing my

client of murder?”

“I have witnesses who can testify that he suspected

that Harris was dead before it was public knowledge.

All I’m asking is how did he know it before the rest of

us?”

“Okay, but I’m going to warn him that he doesn’t

have to answer if it self-incriminates.”

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MARGARET MARON

“Fine, but remind him that we now have his finger-

prints on file.”

“You have the killer’s fingerprints?”

Dwight gave a pointed look to his watch. “Once his

people come back, he’s free to go, you know.”

Annoyed, King translated Dwight’s questions and

it was soon apparent that the farmworker was denying

knowledge of anything, anywhere, any time. But when

King pressed him and rubbed his thumbs across his own

fingerprints, Sanaugustin went mute.

Then, hesitantly, he framed a question and King

looked at Dwight. “He wants to know if fingerprints

show up on everything.”

“Like what?”

King gave a hands-up gesture of futility. “He won’t

say.”

Dwight considered for a long moment, his brown

eyes fixed on the Mexican, who dropped his own eyes.

Dwight had never thought of himself as intuitive. He

put more faith in connecting the dots than in leaping

over them. But Deborah had been a judge for four years.

Hundreds of liars and con artists had stood before her.

If it was her opinion that Sanaugustin’s question was to

get confirmation of something suspected but not posi-

tively known, surely that counted for something. But

if that were the case, why was this guy worried about

fingerprints? Unless—?

“Tell him that yes, we can lift fingerprints off of

wooden doors,” he said, hoping to God that Denning

had indeed dusted the doors of that bloody abattoir.

“And if he touched the car, his prints will be there as

well.”

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HARD ROW

When translated, his words unleashed such a torrent

of Spanish that even King was taken aback. He mo-

tioned for his client to slow down. At least twice in the

narrative, the man crossed himself.

Eventually, he ran out of words, crossed himself a

final time, and waited for King to turn to Dwight and

repeat what had been said.

Everyone at the camp had heard about the body parts

that were appearing along the length of their road, he

had told King. They had even, may God forgive them,

joked about it. But no one connected it with their farm.

How should they? It was an Anglo thing, nothing to do

with them. As for him, yes, he had once been a heavy

user, but now he was trying to stay clean for the sake of

the children. That’s why he gave most of his money to

his wife to save for them. But on Saturday Juan had sent

him over to the sheds to get a tractor hitch and he went

to the wrong shed by mistake. Inside was the big boss’s

car and that made him curious. Why was the car there?

Then when he got closer, he heard the flies and smelled

the stench of blood. Lots of blood. Bloody chains lay on

the floor. Nearby, a bloody axe.

He had panicked, slammed the door shut, then found

the tractor hitch he’d been sent for. As soon as he could

get away, he had made his wife give him money and

had come into town to buy something that would take

away the sight and the smell. That was the truth. On his

mother’s grave he would swear it.

Ever since a killer had suckered him with a convinc-

ing show of grief and bewilderment over the death of

a spouse, Dwight no longer trusted his instincts as to

whether someone was lying or telling the truth, but

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MARGARET MARON

there was something about the man’s show of exag-

gerated wide-eyed innocence at the end that made him

wonder if they were hearing the whole story.

“Who did he tell?”

“He says nobody.”

“Ask him who hated his boss enough to do that?”

Again the negative shrug and a refusal to speculate.

“Juan Santos? Sid Lomax?”

But Rafael Sanaugustin continued to swear that this

was the full extent of his knowledge and beyond that

they could not budge him.

Dwight switched off the tape recorder and carried it

back out to the desk, leaving Millard King to discuss the

possession charges with his client.

When Juan Santos and the two women returned, he

had them go around to his office with him. According

to the jailer’s log, no one had visited Sanaugustin since

he was locked up Saturday night, so the likelihood of

their having conferred was minimal but not wholly out

of the question because he’d used his one phone call to

tell Santos where he was. When Dwight first asked about

Sanaugustin’s movements on Saturday, Santos did not

immediately mention sending him for a tractor hitch.

That detail was sandwiched in between their problems

with one of the tractors and how they were falling be-

hind schedule with the spring plowing, and it seemed to

come almost as an afterthought, as if it were something

of little importance. Despite rigorous questioning, all

three denied knowing what Sanaugustin had seen on

Saturday and all declared that they had first learned of it

and of Buck Harris’s death when Dwight was out there

on the farm yesterday.

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Dwight stared at them in frustration. Impossible to

know who really knew what, but he was willing to bet

that Señora Sanaugustin knew more than she was willing

to admit. Wives usually did. True to his word, though,

he turned them all loose at two o’clock and reached for

his phone to call Richards and bring her up to date on

what he’d learned.

She sounded equally dispirited when she reported

that they had come up pretty dry as well. “But we did

learn that Mrs. Harris was out here on the farm that

Monday,” she said. “And at least it’s stopped raining.”

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C H A P T E R

25

The employer who treats his help fairly and reasonably in all

respects is the one who will, as a general rule, secure the best

results from their service.

—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

% No sooner did Juan Santos and the two women

leave, than Dwight’s phone rang. It was Pete

Taylor.

“Sorry, Bryant, but Mrs. Harris’s daughter is flying in

this afternoon and she can’t make it up to Dobbs today.

What about tomorrow morning?”

“Fine,” said Dwight. “Nine o’clock?”

“That’ll work for her. And . . . uh . . . this is a little

gruesome, but she was asking me about funeral ar-

rangements for Harris. The daughter’s going to want

to know. But his head’s still missing, isn’t it?”

“ ’Fraid so, Taylor,” he said, seeing no need for the

daughter to know what else was missing. “I know it’s

weird for her, but we may not find it for months. If ever.

The ME’s probably ready to release what we do have,

though.”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” said Taylor. “See you

in the morning. Nine o’clock.”

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HARD ROW

With his afternoon unexpectedly clear, Dwight called

McLamb and got an update on the Mitchiner case.

Because the two deputies would not be speaking to

the old man’s daughter till five, Dwight sent them to

question some witnesses about a violent home invasion

that had taken place in Black Creek over the weekend.

“While you’re in that neighborhood, try dropping the

name of Mitchiner’s daughter. See if she has any en-

emies who might have thought that they’d hurt her if

they hurt him.”

After attending to a few more administrative details,

Dwight called Richards to say that he was coming out

to the Buckley place. “Tell Mrs. Samuelson we want to

speak to her again.”

“Should I try questioning Sanaugustin’s wife when

she gets here?”

“Not if the men are around. If she’s going to talk at

all, it’ll probably be when they’re not there.”

Despite the gory murder and the puzzle of Mitchiner’s

hand, Dwight felt almost lighthearted as he drove out

along Ward Dairy Road. The sun was breaking through

the clouds, trees were beginning to bud and more

than one yard sported bright bursts of yellow forsythia

bushes. The rains would have settled the dirt around

the roots of the trees they had planted this weekend,

and whatever the problems with Cal, Deborah seemed

to be taking them in stride.

He was not particularly superstitious but he caught

himself checking the cab of the truck for some wood to

touch.

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MARGARET MARON

Just to be on the safe side.

After years of wanting what he thought he could

never have, these last few months had been so good that

he was almost afraid he was going to jinx his luck by

even acknowledging it. He told himself to concentrate